Saturday, November 11, 2006

Adventures in Masonry: Day 2

Rain is coming. 70% chance this evening and better tonight. Gotta get as much done as early as I can. So I got up at 10:00. Hey, I may have stuff to do, but it's still a Saturday.
On the roof at 10:30, finished another row of brick in an hour. A whole whopping 6 of them. Then I spent about half an hour repointing the big chunk of chimney that's mostly intact. Somewhere in there I took some pictures to post Monday.
Now I'm giving it time to dry before I get back at it.

Gandolf has good instincts. I was sitting in the front yard reading when I heard a bird scream. I looked up to see Gandolf leaping from the roof as a falcon, a big one, dove at her with claws out. I'd left Gandolf on the roof with her leash tied to a bucket of rocks. She wound up dangling like a worm on a hook. But she was dangling so close to the building that the falcon couldn't get her. I ran through the house, over the fence in to the neighbor's yard, up the ladder to the neighbor's roof, pull the ladder up, put the ladder up to my roof, and as I stuck my head over the edge I saw the falcon perched on the edge of the roof trying to figure out how to get that parrot. Once I was there it flew off. I pulled Gandolf up and she clicked her tongue at me a bunch of times.
We sat there on the roof with her on my lap for awhile until we both calmed down.

The mortar is drying slower than I thought. I went ahead and put the big clump of bricks in place. It's a little odd shaped. I'm trying to stack this stuff like Legos and this appears to have been build with little regard for right angles. I would be better off trying to take it apart and rebuilding it but that takes time and I'd probably damage the bricks. If there's any intolerances in construction mortar should fill it in.

I may decide to go back up later today, but probably not. I was looking for an old shower curtain, but found the fabric from a broken umbrella instead. It fit nicely over the chimney and my extra bricks should hold it in place.

Rain and cold expected Sunday and Monday with weather in the 60s on Tuesday. My plyboo will be delivered Tuesday so I'll just make a big home repair day of it.

1 comment:

TlalocW said...

What level are you, and when do you learn the secret handshake and have being a mason pay off for you career-wise, etc?